Attack of the Vegan Zombies!

Shot on a shoestring budget, Attack of the Vegan Zombies! follows struggling vintners Joe (Jim Townsend) and Dionne (Christine Egan) as they’re faced with the prospect of losing their farm after yet another bad crop. Dionne, out of sheer desperation, asks her occultist mom (H. Lynn Smith) to work up a spell designed to rejuvenate the crop for the next year, with problems ensuing as the plants inevitably come to life and start attacking those who have recently consumed wine. It’s an intriguing premise that’s initially employed to unexpectedly compelling effect by writer/director Townsend, as the filmmaker’s striking visual sensibilities and the almost uniformly strong performances prove effective at compensating for the production’s obvious lack of funds. The intermittently suspenseful atmosphere can only sustain one’s interest for so long, however, and there inevitably reaches a point at which the achingly deliberate pace begins to overshadow the film’s overtly positive elements. Exacerbating the progressively less-than-enthralling vibe is Townsend’s disastrous decision to shoehorn a couple of stereotypical nerds into the narrative, as the eye-rollingly hackneyed nature of the characters (ie they both wear pocket protectors, for crying out loud!) casts a pall of amateurishness over Attack of the Vegan Zombies! from which it can’t quite recover. The end result is nevertheless a better-than-average micro-budget horror flick, and it’ll certainly be interesting to see what Townsend is able to do with more cash at his disposal.

** out of ****